Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, y'all, before we get started, let's talk about Pushnick.
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Speaker 1: Sign up for Pushnick and Apple podcast subscriptions. Craig Finn,
Speaker 1: the lead singer and songwriter for The Hold Steady, is
Speaker 1: known for his vivid, literary style songwriting. He often writes
Speaker 1: about characters going through an existential crisis, what the one
Speaker 1: saw and the astray in the kitchen. I could tell
Speaker 1: that it was difficult to bring that sort of subject
Speaker 1: to Craig Finn grew up in Minneapolis, going to gigs
Speaker 1: for hometown heroes like Prince and The Replacements. After a
Speaker 1: stint working as a financial broker, Finn moved to New
Speaker 1: York City and eventually formed The Old Steady in two
Speaker 1: thousand and three. This year, the band released their eighth
Speaker 1: studio album, Open Door Policy, and this time, Finn says
Speaker 1: he focused on themes related to the trappions of technology
Speaker 1: and late stage capitalist. On today's episode, Craig Finn talks
Speaker 1: to Bruce head them about how the Drive by Truckers
Speaker 1: inspired him to create The Old Steady, about how Springsteen
Speaker 1: taught him to vamp, and why he feels like it's
Speaker 1: his duty to not only write about the party, but
Speaker 1: to write about the hangover. Two. This is broke and
Speaker 1: record liner notes for the digital Age. I'm justin Richmondson.
Speaker 1: Here's Bruce Sedlam with Craig Finn. This is a thrill
Speaker 1: for me for many reasons, but one is that the
Speaker 1: person who introduced me to your music was my old
Speaker 1: colleague David Carr at the New York Times. Now, David
Speaker 1: like you was very funny, which is rare in pop
Speaker 1: music and rare at the New York Times, i should say.
Speaker 1: And he was from Minneapolis, and he could never explain
Speaker 1: to me what was in the water in that part
Speaker 1: of the world that produced like such a great scene
Speaker 1: for bands. I mean, everyone points to the cold and
Speaker 1: the reason to stay inside. I always felt like when
Speaker 1: I was coming up in the nineties, there were people
Speaker 1: going to shows regularly in Minneapolis, like attending shows at
Speaker 1: First Avenue of the big club there that if they
Speaker 1: lived in another city maybe wouldn't have been going to
Speaker 1: that many shows, you know. I mean, I just think
Speaker 1: it was kind of part of the fabric of the city,
Speaker 1: and I think the city's proud of it, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that the city puts forth, Hey
Speaker 1: where the place where the replacements came from? Who's ker Do,
Speaker 1: Prince obviously now Lizzo, you know, has some connection to
Speaker 1: the city which they put forth constantly. It's always been
Speaker 1: a source of pride for the city. When you grew up.
Speaker 1: Was there a sharp divide between the black clubs and
Speaker 1: where Prince sort of made his name and the white
Speaker 1: clubs for replacements and that kind of thing. You know,
Speaker 1: there's certainly is a segregated city, But um, I think Prince,
Speaker 1: you know, really is connected with First Avenue, which is
Speaker 1: this place that a lot of music has come from,
Speaker 1: and certainly the place where I saw the shows in
Speaker 1: my formative years. You know, this is where I saw
Speaker 1: the replacements and Who's ker Do, et cetera, sol Asylum
Speaker 1: and Prince, you know in Purple Rain. That's that's the
Speaker 1: setting of it, and you know, people have often been
Speaker 1: mistaken that he owned it, So Prince is very much
Speaker 1: connected to the same club that everything was happening. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure it's a big enough city to have, you know,
Speaker 1: massive amount of clubs and have that kind of divide.
Speaker 1: Everything gets, you know, in some way mushed together just
Speaker 1: by the size of the city. Yeah, So for you,
Speaker 1: was it the live scene or was there a particular record,
Speaker 1: a particular song that you heard when you were a
Speaker 1: kid that said, yeah, this is it. This is either
Speaker 1: what I love or what I'm gonna do. I have
Speaker 1: this thing where I remember seeing someone on TV. I
Speaker 1: believe this is Ray Charles playing when I was very young.
Speaker 1: I think it was on Sesame Street and I looked
Speaker 1: at the screen and I said, I knew Happy Days.
Speaker 1: I knew Fonzie was cool, right, So I said, hey, Mom,
Speaker 1: is that guy cool? And she said, yeah, he's cool.
Speaker 1: And I said, do we know anyone cool? She said no.
Speaker 1: And I remember at that moment being like, well, this
Speaker 1: is this is kind of annoying, Like I want to
Speaker 1: go find something cool. And one of the first things
Speaker 1: I remember another that attracted me was the Monkey's TV
Speaker 1: show I mean, this guy idea of guys living together
Speaker 1: and bursting into songs and having a good time while
Speaker 1: playing music to music excited me always. But I think
Speaker 1: the real kind of watershed moment was discovering local things
Speaker 1: in Minneapolis, And so having these bands in my hometown
Speaker 1: was somehow exciting and accessible to me and made me
Speaker 1: sort of believe maybe that I could be in a
Speaker 1: band too, in a way that led Zeppelin and Aerosmith
Speaker 1: had not previous. And then when did it start? Feed
Speaker 1: was guitar your first instrument? Yeah? I started playing guitar.
Speaker 1: I got to get an electric guitar, and actually a
Speaker 1: bit of luck, fortuitous luck, signed up for lessons and
Speaker 1: a guy who was teaching lessons at that guitar store
Speaker 1: was named Chris Osgood and he'd been a member of
Speaker 1: a band called the Suicide Commandos, which was sort of
Speaker 1: the first Minneapolis punk band. They'd signed to Blank Records
Speaker 1: in like seventy six with Perubu, and he was a
Speaker 1: fountain of knowledge, you know. He taught me a lot
Speaker 1: about playing guitar, but a lot about other things too,
Speaker 1: And he had this fun off like he had a landline,
Speaker 1: you know phone in his lesson room and when phone
Speaker 1: would ring, he'd turn up the stereo and then he
Speaker 1: answered the phone, which is you know, countered a normal logic,
Speaker 1: and I would always say, what what are you doing?
Speaker 1: He said, you always want him to make you know,
Speaker 1: make you think you're having a party. So he had
Speaker 1: a lot of tips like that, and he turned me
Speaker 1: onto a lot of cool music once he heard what
Speaker 1: I was into and kind of got me started on
Speaker 1: sort of the lifestyle, if you will. So you mentioned
Speaker 1: the lifestyle. So that brings us to your new album
Speaker 1: with the whold Steady open door policy. If anybody thought
Speaker 1: you were mellowing with age with your solo albums, you're
Speaker 1: right back in the right into the heart of the
Speaker 1: wold Steadies. I guess worldview a lot of desperate people
Speaker 1: kind of doing desperate things. Tell me about the writing
Speaker 1: of this album, the album, I think one thing was
Speaker 1: different from the last one. You know, we in twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen we put our record called Thrashing through the Passion.
Speaker 1: There was a collection kind of a single, so we
Speaker 1: were putting stuff out as we as we recorded it, really,
Speaker 1: which is exciting. I mean, the technology now allows you
Speaker 1: to do that, and we know how to get at
Speaker 1: our fans right through the you know, social media and whatnot.
Speaker 1: So we're putting that out and then we ended up
Speaker 1: kind of compiling them to make a release. And that's cool,
Speaker 1: but when you're releasing quote unquote singles that way, you're
Speaker 1: kind of always swinging for the fences. So for this record,
Speaker 1: we decided early on, let's make this an album, and
Speaker 1: we we didn't record it all at once. We recorded
Speaker 1: in two different sessions. But in choosing to make an album,
Speaker 1: it allowed me, especially as a lyricist, to make some
Speaker 1: decisions in a way that kind of circle the wagons
Speaker 1: a little bit, maybe make things make a whole, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of create a bigger body of work than just
Speaker 1: a collection of singles. And I think that was that's exciting.
Speaker 1: I like working that way. I grew up listening to albums,
Speaker 1: you know, and I think that's kind of what we're
Speaker 1: good at. I mean, I think that like we've worked
Speaker 1: with that length of format before successfully and so I
Speaker 1: think that was kind of fun for us to go
Speaker 1: back in that we're able to create something that was
Speaker 1: kind of overarching like that. Do you see it as
Speaker 1: like there's an arc story arc to the album, or
Speaker 1: just means that you can take risks on certain songs.
Speaker 1: The latter I mean, I think you if you're releasing singles,
Speaker 1: you're never gonna make the weird ending song. You're never
Speaker 1: gonna say, Okay, that can be a little short song
Speaker 1: that sets up this next song. So the album allows
Speaker 1: you to do things like that. But and in a
Speaker 1: sense it's I don't know that it's a concept record,
Speaker 1: but I was able to kind of early on identify
Speaker 1: themes and kind of keep writing at it. And I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, the things I was thinking about at the time,
Speaker 1: or things like certainly mental health, but also you know,
Speaker 1: kind of technology and late stage capitalism sort of how
Speaker 1: that all ties into it and how that affects the
Speaker 1: stories on the record. The record was all written and
Speaker 1: almost done by the end of twenty nineteen. And it's
Speaker 1: funny because I think back and at the time, twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen felt like a very heavy year. Yeah, then we
Speaker 1: had twenty twenty where this record kind of aged like
Speaker 1: a you know, like in an oak barrel of whiskey
Speaker 1: or whatever. You mentioned technology. And one thing I think
Speaker 1: your album grapples with, which I think is hard for
Speaker 1: songwriters is the effect of technology. You know, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: and I want you to talk about the song Spices,
Speaker 1: but that's about the sort of return of an old
Speaker 1: flame who sends somebody a photo over text. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I was thinking about like, like, you know, from
Speaker 1: the years of touring, I just got a new phone,
Speaker 1: and you know, they transfer all the contacts and there's
Speaker 1: just people in there, right, you know, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: just all kinds of people, people I don't recognize whatever,
Speaker 1: you know that maybe I did an interview, I needed
Speaker 1: to connect with them, and all of a sudden, any
Speaker 1: of those people can pop up on your screen. And
Speaker 1: I was thinking about, Oh, an adventure starting by really
Speaker 1: anything kind of you know, popping up in this device
Speaker 1: you're carrying around and saying meet me here, and you know,
Speaker 1: our ability to transmit images as you say, And that
Speaker 1: seemed like a very modern start to a story, like
Speaker 1: it's almost to choose your own adventure or something, you know,
Speaker 1: the clues pop up on your phone and you're following blindly.
Speaker 1: That was kind of the idea behind Spices. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you can reconnect in a second, in a in a
Speaker 1: couple of keystrokes and contact someone and that's that's unique
Speaker 1: to our times. And I think the way we communicate,
Speaker 1: the way we use technology certainly affects all of this,
Speaker 1: you know, the political discourse, our friendships, etc. You know,
Speaker 1: I was thinking this in terms of probably the songs
Speaker 1: you grew up loving. I know you're you know, Springsteen
Speaker 1: is one of your heroes, mentors, whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call them. You know, a song like Darkness on the
Speaker 1: Edge of Town is about somebody telling somebody that if
Speaker 1: they want to tell somebody else how to find him,
Speaker 1: they can find him in the edge of town. And
Speaker 1: it's it's about disconnection in a way. It's about someone's
Speaker 1: moved on with their life. And I was thinking about
Speaker 1: that when I was listening to Spices, because I thought,
Speaker 1: but yeah, but that person can be recalled instantly now,
Speaker 1: or that person leaves, but you're following them on Instagram.
Speaker 1: It's like they don't leave your life. Somehow, they don't leave.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's this also this thing that I
Speaker 1: was like, I've been amused by lately. Sometimes you'll meet
Speaker 1: someone right and it's your friends dating someone saying, and
Speaker 1: you follow you You have a nice night out with
Speaker 1: this couple, and then you end up following that their date.
Speaker 1: And this has happened to me several times recently. They
Speaker 1: break up with this girl or this you know that
Speaker 1: this partner, and you don't know. So it turns out
Speaker 1: years later you're still following this person that you had
Speaker 1: one night, you know, and a nice dinner with. At
Speaker 1: some point then suddenly you realize that they're not even
Speaker 1: that connected in my life anymore. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: that in this album, you know. I think of Unpleasant Breakfast,
Speaker 1: which is another sort of recalling of a bad relationship. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that was no this nostalgia that
Speaker 1: we have and and in that case someone you know.
Speaker 1: Mental health is a big part of this record, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean I think I always used to I feel
Speaker 1: like I used to write a lot about partying, and
Speaker 1: at some point, you know, I'm getting towards fifty, at
Speaker 1: some point, you know, you realize, like some of this
Speaker 1: partying is self medication, etc. And the mental health is
Speaker 1: the other side of this coin. I think I've become
Speaker 1: way more interested in that. I think that's in that song.
Speaker 1: Maybe the Denariator is having a hard time just looking
Speaker 1: back on the before time and you know, saddened or
Speaker 1: unable to connect a happy memory too because of where
Speaker 1: it's got to. So tell me what your process for
Speaker 1: writing is now. Now you do many of your own
Speaker 1: albums where you do the music and the lyrics. Do
Speaker 1: you just do lyrics for the whole steady or do
Speaker 1: you work on the music as well. I would say
Speaker 1: it's an exception when I work on the music. There
Speaker 1: are times I've made suggestions, but that's generally the exception.
Speaker 1: Usually it's on Franz or Tad or Steve bringing something in.
Speaker 1: And usually these days we'll do a lot more true technology.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of dropbox and someone will say, hey,
Speaker 1: I've got this thing, and it's usually two parts, let's say,
Speaker 1: and I'll start saying, well, I'll look through my used
Speaker 1: to be my notebook but now it's the notes app
Speaker 1: on my phone and see, like, you know, what have
Speaker 1: I got? I got little things and I'll get something together.
Speaker 1: But then we'll all get in a room and then
Speaker 1: that's usually when we start moving things around and maybe
Speaker 1: someone has an idea for a third part or you know,
Speaker 1: and we start arranging it. And so there it's kind
Speaker 1: of the two parts. It's the getting ready and then
Speaker 1: the togetherness on the last two records. You know, the
Speaker 1: the producer Josh Kaufman has showed up pretty early in
Speaker 1: the process and kind of been in been around for
Speaker 1: at least part of that second process, and pitched in
Speaker 1: some ideas about arrangement and you know, how we how
Speaker 1: we might approach things, which has been super helpful and cool.
Speaker 1: And then is it you go off in a room
Speaker 1: by yourself and figure out the lyrics or do the
Speaker 1: tracks they send you have some they tweaked something in
Speaker 1: your imagination? Yeah, I mean usually I have, you know,
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff written down that that are just
Speaker 1: sort of notes and things I might think of how
Speaker 1: that might show up somewhere. Oftentimes it's, honestly, oftentimes it's
Speaker 1: getting the first line. Sometimes the first line is just
Speaker 1: enough to open up and go with it and see
Speaker 1: where it takes me. Can you give me an example
Speaker 1: from this album where the first line really dictated where
Speaker 1: you went? Yeah, I mean I think, um, that spicy song,
Speaker 1: you know, She's she sent a picture of a plethora
Speaker 1: of poker chips spread out on a bed between a
Speaker 1: mouth and a leg. I thought, wow, like, what what
Speaker 1: what happens when you get that photo, you know, and
Speaker 1: the idea of poker chips was kind of funny in
Speaker 1: a hotel and I, you know, outside of a casino.
Speaker 1: I sort of felt like that was a that was
Speaker 1: a funny image and what would it what would it mean?
Speaker 1: Do you know how a story's going to end when
Speaker 1: you start the lyric? Not always I'd say fifty percent.
Speaker 1: And I'm a great tinkerer, like I I honestly sort
Speaker 1: of am always playing with things, and then when we
Speaker 1: record it, when we cut the song, I feel like
Speaker 1: it's done, like I can let go of it my mind.
Speaker 1: But up until then, I'm especially with the small words
Speaker 1: and the little you know again, the meter just kind
Speaker 1: of toying with things. I'll go and U like sort
Speaker 1: of hunt for the worst lines, like I'll look at
Speaker 1: you know, I'll write out the song or type out
Speaker 1: the song and then say like which is the worst line,
Speaker 1: and then which is you know, if I had to
Speaker 1: replace one, what would I do? And kind of keep
Speaker 1: at in that way, and that can change you know,
Speaker 1: the story a little bit. But there are times I'll
Speaker 1: start I have no idea where it's going, and then
Speaker 1: there are times where I know exactly how this ends. Right.
Speaker 1: There's some part of songwriting that reminds me of doing
Speaker 1: cross words. It's like sometimes you just that one line
Speaker 1: you get kind of is that big, big, long one
Speaker 1: across the middle, and everything sort of falls into place
Speaker 1: after you at that. She sent a picture of a
Speaker 1: plethora of poker chips spread on the bed between a
Speaker 1: mouth and a leg. She said, there's pretty many people already,
Speaker 1: but still I wish you were here. I hadn't really
Speaker 1: seen her since the previous winter. She'd been a drop
Speaker 1: dead number since later last December, but here she is
Speaker 1: rising again. Happy Easter. You want to go get some beers?
Speaker 1: How the part tenders were strangling their shakers. It was
Speaker 1: springtime in the sweet part of the city. It's nice
Speaker 1: to hit the taverns with familiar companions. I kind of
Speaker 1: like it when she's laughing at me. That's a bit
Speaker 1: of spices from the hold Steadies new album, Open Door Policy.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a quick break, We're back
Speaker 1: with more from Craigfinn and Bruce had Them. You're a
Speaker 1: literary writer in the sense that, hey, you write a lot,
Speaker 1: but you have these recurring characters that almost since the
Speaker 1: start of your career, I think even before the whole Steady,
Speaker 1: you had certain characters that would recur. They're not name necessarily,
Speaker 1: but did this character show up in this record as well?
Speaker 1: You know, I don't think so. I always feel like
Speaker 1: it's it's in my best interest to scare that. But no,
Speaker 1: I think this is a new I certainly think they're
Speaker 1: all living in the same universe, but I think this
Speaker 1: is a new set of people. I believe that I
Speaker 1: think things are interesting from about fifteen years ago. And
Speaker 1: so when I think when this band started and I
Speaker 1: was in my mid thirties, I was writing a lot
Speaker 1: about people who were twenty, you know, and uh, that's
Speaker 1: an age of great confidence and maybe maybe too much confidence,
Speaker 1: and people can wonderfully get into trouble due to sort
Speaker 1: of their cockiness. But as I get towards fifty, I
Speaker 1: think people in their mid thirties are more interesting to me.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of the people on this
Speaker 1: record are those people. And you know, I guess I'm
Speaker 1: more interested in people who are stuck, you know, in
Speaker 1: some way, and they may be making bad decisions, but
Speaker 1: they're not so wild about it, and I think that
Speaker 1: there's there's something more interesting in those people now to me,
Speaker 1: you know, I used to really love writing about people
Speaker 1: who are partying a lot. Now I think I'm more
Speaker 1: interested in, like, uh, you know, the grandma who's giving
Speaker 1: that guy two hundred dollars every day, the sort of
Speaker 1: the codependency of it all, And that's that's fascinating to me.
Speaker 1: And I think that those kind of relationships interests me
Speaker 1: a lot these days because though that's that's the fuel
Speaker 1: that keeps that guy parting, but somehow that's that's deeper
Speaker 1: and weirder to me. You're associated with these kind of
Speaker 1: characters partying and up all night, and even though there's
Speaker 1: a lot of hangovers and people throwing up, there is
Speaker 1: something still there's a kind of shoddy glamor about it all.
Speaker 1: Do you still look back on that as kind of
Speaker 1: a glamorous, exciting time. Well, I think all these things
Speaker 1: cause elation. Right, you know, you can drink six glasses
Speaker 1: of champagne. It's gonna be pretty fun that night. It's
Speaker 1: it's not the next morning. But I don't think it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's hard to deny that there are
Speaker 1: good times that can come from that, but you know,
Speaker 1: if it's not repeated every night of your life, for
Speaker 1: every night for a long period. But yeah, I do
Speaker 1: think that there is fun and like I said, elation,
Speaker 1: I do believe it's sort of a duty to kind
Speaker 1: of write about the hangover too. It reminds me a
Speaker 1: bit and this is another Minnesota reference. It reminds me
Speaker 1: a bit of Fitzgerald. Yeah, I mean I think there's
Speaker 1: there's that. I mean, the waiste, sort of the garbage
Speaker 1: at the end of the night, sweeping up the cups
Speaker 1: as sort of a fet Fitzgerald thing, you know, like
Speaker 1: the bottles on the floor at the end of the show.
Speaker 1: There is something so distinct about that sound of when
Speaker 1: you're sweeping up those those red beer cups, makes it
Speaker 1: sound like nothing else. I used to when we first
Speaker 1: started touring, I used to always like to take a photo.
Speaker 1: I used to carry around, like you know, before they're
Speaker 1: all on our phones, a digital camera and I always
Speaker 1: used to like to take a photo of the mess
Speaker 1: at the end of the show after the crowd left.
Speaker 1: A song I found really fascinating and disturbing and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure why is prior procedure. Can you tell me
Speaker 1: a bit about that song? Yeah, prior procedure is actually
Speaker 1: the song that mentions the lyric open door policy, so
Speaker 1: it's I don't know a hinge on the whole thing.
Speaker 1: That song is sort of about someone who's or you know,
Speaker 1: a couple who's been displaced and are trying to find
Speaker 1: a place to stay and end up, you know, going
Speaker 1: to this kind of fictitious crash pad that's hosted by
Speaker 1: a really rich guy, a billionaire or something, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's the idea that he's being generous by letting all
Speaker 1: these people stay there, but he's also kind of controlling
Speaker 1: the strings, right, you know, he's still in charge, and
Speaker 1: it's very much a culture personality, and I think that
Speaker 1: there's sort of a modern kind of an allegory there.
Speaker 1: There's that seems like the relationship we have with, you know,
Speaker 1: some of the very wealthy people in this country. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a science fiction thing, but it seemed
Speaker 1: like something that could happen. It reminded me of the
Speaker 1: case of the He was a venture capitalist who co
Speaker 1: founded Zappos, the shoe company, and he died recently, but
Speaker 1: he just seemed to travel around to Vegas in these
Speaker 1: places and it was just always a party people were
Speaker 1: always around him spending his money. But this seemed to
Speaker 1: go on for years that people would just sort of
Speaker 1: attached themselves and then sort of wander off. And that's
Speaker 1: that's what it reminded me of. Somehow I made this
Speaker 1: guy up in my head. But I do remember reading
Speaker 1: that are the article about that guy, and it seemed
Speaker 1: like exactly the type of thing I was thinking of,
Speaker 1: this sort of hedonistic but financial with you know, backing
Speaker 1: of massive financial success. Because there are so many stories
Speaker 1: in this and it's so varied, what is the inspiration
Speaker 1: for these stories? Are there novels you're reading now or
Speaker 1: is it the newspaper both? I mean I get a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff from fiction. I always I do like
Speaker 1: reading fiction. I think in some ways it's meditative to
Speaker 1: go into someone else's world right in a way that
Speaker 1: no other form, you know, movies, music and everything else,
Speaker 1: Like I can kind of have some distraction happening. But
Speaker 1: if I'm really into a novel, I'm in there, and
Speaker 1: so those that's a place that inspires stories. I don't
Speaker 1: know that I can point to an exact story and
Speaker 1: the record that's influenced by a novel, but it certain
Speaker 1: gives me something to aspire to that kind of fiction,
Speaker 1: creating a world that people can inhabit. I also think
Speaker 1: just taking things in and motion. Travel for me is
Speaker 1: wildly exciting. Unfortunately, that is something we've lost over the
Speaker 1: past year. But one of the things I've talked with
Speaker 1: my bandmates about, you know, not just the travel where
Speaker 1: you get to go to the top of a mountain,
Speaker 1: but the travel that you end up having a beer
Speaker 1: in the Hilton Garden in you know, near the airport
Speaker 1: and in a small Midwestern city. Somehow that ends up
Speaker 1: being really inspiring in just its sense of displacement and
Speaker 1: being observational in those moments. What has the isolation of
Speaker 1: the last year. What's that meant for your writing? I'm
Speaker 1: proud to say I've been able to write a ton
Speaker 1: like I've just been able to crank it out. But
Speaker 1: I have two sort of a two step process. Number one,
Speaker 1: putting words on paper. That's been surprisingly easy for me
Speaker 1: this year. The second part is this any good I
Speaker 1: can't tell, you know, my sort of ability to criticize myself,
Speaker 1: my judgment has really gone away in this I think
Speaker 1: it's the lack of just sorting your normal life compare
Speaker 1: things too. I mean, I've just have a pile of stuff.
Speaker 1: Now I'll either get that back or I'll use a
Speaker 1: producer to help me wade through it. I'm definitely not
Speaker 1: throwing things out because I'm like, I don't know, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. It's just that the judgment has been suspended
Speaker 1: this year. Yeah, very much so. And I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know why. I don't know what that is, but
Speaker 1: that is definitely what I have felt. And I've actually
Speaker 1: talked to a few people that have felt the same.
Speaker 1: What has because you are you are a church going Catholic,
Speaker 1: What is that meant for you in the past year
Speaker 1: not to have that fellowship. I've gone back and forth
Speaker 1: with my faith a lot over the past number of
Speaker 1: years and really my whole life. And uh, I find
Speaker 1: a lot of beauty in church and and and certainly
Speaker 1: in the Bible as well as the rituals of a
Speaker 1: Catholic mass. I have gotten frustrated and increasingly frustrated with
Speaker 1: the church, you know, and and and especially some of
Speaker 1: the political stances it's taken repeatedly, but especially over the
Speaker 1: past four years. So I was at a period of
Speaker 1: not really active church going when this started. Well, when
Speaker 1: I say you're a Catholic, that that means you're always
Speaker 1: battling with the Catholic Church. So yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: think that that's probably that's just probably part like I've
Speaker 1: accepted that part of it. Like I'll probably be back
Speaker 1: and back and forth from my life. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: a pretty good run of not going. Were your parents'
Speaker 1: churchgoers when you grew up? Oh yeah, yeah, the whole family?
Speaker 1: You know, that's that's where I got it. My father
Speaker 1: was raised pretty Catholic and you know, still does confession
Speaker 1: and all that, and that was part of our you know,
Speaker 1: Holy Days, et cetera. Every Sunday, Holy Days, no meat
Speaker 1: on Fridays, etc. So all of that was part of
Speaker 1: my upbringing. And you know, like I said, I still
Speaker 1: I still find beauty in it. I just have to
Speaker 1: figure out this identic Catholicism in my head. It is
Speaker 1: probably only going to live there. It's more muted now
Speaker 1: in your lyrics than it once was. Yeah, well, Separation
Speaker 1: Sunday was sort of the high point of that. Our
Speaker 1: second record, man, that's when I went the deep dive.
Speaker 1: It does not appear as much on this record at all.
Speaker 1: I think Saint Francis has mentioned, and that's almost sort
Speaker 1: of the most secular saint you can think of. There's
Speaker 1: a movie Brother's Son's Sister Moon from nineteen seventy two
Speaker 1: that is about Saint Francis that is just gorgeous, and
Speaker 1: that's almost the I almost think of him as more
Speaker 1: of a secular hippie figure, and then I do as
Speaker 1: a hard Catholic saint. But I think maybe it mirrors
Speaker 1: sort of my own relationship with the church. Probably, and
Speaker 1: maybe I feel like I've already gone there just wasn't
Speaker 1: on my mind when I made this record, and who
Speaker 1: knows it could return. After a quick break, we'll be
Speaker 1: back with more from Craig fan We're back with the
Speaker 1: rest of Bruce Hedlum's conversation with Craig Finn. You know,
Speaker 1: one of my great arguments with David Carr was that
Speaker 1: David didn't like bands to get old. He liked their
Speaker 1: you know, youthful, crazy, stage diving origin, and it worried
Speaker 1: him when they got older. Now, I will say, when
Speaker 1: the Replacements got back together, David was first in line.
Speaker 1: You're older now, I don't did you think you'd be
Speaker 1: in this band this long? Well, I don't have I
Speaker 1: can't answer that for sure, but I will say that
Speaker 1: in two thousand and two, before we started the whole study,
Speaker 1: I went to see the Drive By Truckers at Bowery
Speaker 1: Ballrooms and it was one of the best shows I've
Speaker 1: ever seen, and I found it incredibly moving. And they
Speaker 1: were guys I was in my early to mid I
Speaker 1: was thirty one, but the guys in the band were
Speaker 1: mostly a little older than I was, and that it
Speaker 1: really excited me. It made me want to be in
Speaker 1: a band again. But what what struck me in that
Speaker 1: moment was that, Okay, these guys are not playing music
Speaker 1: that's like the most absolute hip music for this exact minute.
Speaker 1: However it's classic, and ten years from now it'll sound
Speaker 1: as good as it does today. And so I think
Speaker 1: when we started the whold Steady, there was almost an
Speaker 1: idea that we were trying to create something that was
Speaker 1: that was a little bit more classic. And I was
Speaker 1: already in my thirties and I'd been in a Lifter
Speaker 1: Polar Cut. There was like more of an indie rock
Speaker 1: band in my twenties. I sort of felt like I'd
Speaker 1: crashed out at twenty nine and I was trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what a life in rock and roll would
Speaker 1: look like, and it may start with making something that
Speaker 1: is more classic. So well, I can say for sure
Speaker 1: I even thought about being fifty when I when I
Speaker 1: started the Whole Steady, I can say that I was
Speaker 1: trying to see a band that could age gracefully. And
Speaker 1: I'm happy for that. I mean, I think we created
Speaker 1: something that that has and does you know rock and
Speaker 1: roll is um it gets older every year like the
Speaker 1: rest of us. So I think it's finding or attempting
Speaker 1: to find a place that isn't all twenty year olds,
Speaker 1: you know, and stage dives and broken bottles and is
Speaker 1: it true I heard a story that you were really
Speaker 1: influenced by the Last Waltz. Yes. In my twenties, I
Speaker 1: was really kind of connected to indie rock and punk rock,
Speaker 1: and I almost had a hole in my knowledge where
Speaker 1: it came to a lot of classic rock. And so
Speaker 1: as I sort of burned out on indie rock, I
Speaker 1: started to kind of go back and fill those holes.
Speaker 1: And you know, it was an back then you could
Speaker 1: go to a used record store and find a used
Speaker 1: Rolling Stones record for three dollars and come home and
Speaker 1: be like Wow, this is better than almost any indie
Speaker 1: rock band I know, or any of them. But then
Speaker 1: the Last Waltz was reissued in the early two thousands,
Speaker 1: I knew nothing about the band pretty much, and I
Speaker 1: was just really excited by the way they played together
Speaker 1: and sort of the musicality and the looseness of it.
Speaker 1: And there's this idea that um in indie rock, there's
Speaker 1: this almost choreography that I felt like was taking place
Speaker 1: where it's like, if I play these notes in a
Speaker 1: row right, and you play them too, It's almost like
Speaker 1: that game Simon where you're you have to hit things
Speaker 1: in a you know, in a pattern. Then if we
Speaker 1: if we line it all up, it'll sound good. But
Speaker 1: you know, and this sounds really rudimentary or basic, but
Speaker 1: I just it was exciting to see people play music
Speaker 1: and listen to each other and react to each other
Speaker 1: and play with a little looseness. And I remember seeing
Speaker 1: things like Springsteen at the time, and and and the
Speaker 1: way that in the middle of the song the band
Speaker 1: might vamp and he'll tell a story, and I remember thinking, like,
Speaker 1: I want to do that, Like indie rock bands don't
Speaker 1: do that. They just plow ahead and play their song.
Speaker 1: And stop. You know, well, what if in this band,
Speaker 1: we said, well, I got something to say, and the
Speaker 1: band kind of went down and vamped a little bit,
Speaker 1: and I told the story and then we brought it
Speaker 1: back and that's something we started doing the whole steady
Speaker 1: and it was really exciting. And again that sounds really basic,
Speaker 1: but that's just something I wasn't getting out of indie rock.
Speaker 1: M It's something you'd have gotten out of Ray Charles
Speaker 1: your first for sure. For sure. I mean all that,
Speaker 1: all that stuff, And again it's not it's not rocket science.
Speaker 1: It seems easy, but at the time that's where my
Speaker 1: head was at. No, I think it's very hard. I've
Speaker 1: only seen Springsteen once, but he did a the band stopped,
Speaker 1: he did a big vamp on something, and he talked
Speaker 1: about what freedom meant when he was a kid, and
Speaker 1: then they broke into raise your Hand. I think it's
Speaker 1: it's the old Eddie Floyd's song, and it was just yeah,
Speaker 1: it was fantastic. Yeah, you know, and you can, and
Speaker 1: you can in that moment maybe even pull something or
Speaker 1: that the audience, someone in the audience is doing, or
Speaker 1: something that happened that day and kind of tie it
Speaker 1: all in and I mean in that sense you are
Speaker 1: kind of bringing that that church element to it. You
Speaker 1: know that the homily or the sermon about something that
Speaker 1: that the audience really understands in that moment or that
Speaker 1: week or that day. You've done four solo albums, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's that like? Now when you come back to the band,
Speaker 1: has it changed your songwriting? You tend to do more acoustic,
Speaker 1: more intimate stuff. I mean, I think that when we
Speaker 1: came back and made Thrashing through the Passion and those
Speaker 1: songs that went into that, I think it very much
Speaker 1: affected me in the sense that I was very excited
Speaker 1: to kind of yell and be boisterous and be in
Speaker 1: the whole a loud rock band again. And so you
Speaker 1: know that in that sense, you're flexing both the muscles.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like arms day and legs day. You know,
Speaker 1: you're you're excited to get back to arms day. I
Speaker 1: think one thing that happened with the solo records is
Speaker 1: it starting with Faith in the Future, which was in
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, is it allowed me to kind of dial
Speaker 1: in or really kind of focus on something more maybe empathetic.
Speaker 1: That was definitely turned up in the solo records and
Speaker 1: maybe continues on in the Whole Steady and in this
Speaker 1: sort of version of the Whole Steady, which I kind
Speaker 1: of call him three point Now. I think the last
Speaker 1: two records have maybe included some of them or the
Speaker 1: empathy that I was exploring in the solo records. But
Speaker 1: I also think just anytime you are thrusting yourself into
Speaker 1: situations that you have some amount of discomfort, new musicians, whatever,
Speaker 1: you're going to grow. And I think I'm aware of
Speaker 1: some of the ways I've grown, but I think I've
Speaker 1: probably grown in other ways that I'm not aware of,
Speaker 1: just by trying new things and scaring myself a little bit.
Speaker 1: Where does the empathy come from? You know? At that
Speaker 1: point in twenty fifteen, I think one of the things
Speaker 1: happened my mother passed away, and I remember talking to
Speaker 1: a friend who said who had gone through a similar
Speaker 1: thing as mom, also died from cancer. And he was
Speaker 1: talking about how after that, when he got in situations
Speaker 1: that it would previously annoyed him, you know, like a
Speaker 1: crowded train or something like that, he felt empathy rather
Speaker 1: than annoyance. Like he looked at and said, well, look cold,
Speaker 1: all these people suffer all these people will suffer. They
Speaker 1: all have their own things going on. And I guess
Speaker 1: I really understood what he meant. And I think some
Speaker 1: people will find that from having kids. I don't have
Speaker 1: any kids, so but I think that there was in
Speaker 1: that experience something that put me in touch with something
Speaker 1: you know, more human and you know, more understanding of everyone.
Speaker 1: M you seem very sympathetic of your characters on this album. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that. I guess maybe the older
Speaker 1: I get, the more people I know that I draw
Speaker 1: on where people haven't you know, have either slipped away
Speaker 1: or things haven't worked out for them exactly how they intended. Obviously,
Speaker 1: there's uh decisions and all that, but there's also, you know,
Speaker 1: some amount of luck, I believe, and so I am
Speaker 1: I look at I look with some with love, and
Speaker 1: I want the love that I have for these people
Speaker 1: to come through in some way. It does remind me
Speaker 1: a little of Springsteen's latest album, where he talks about
Speaker 1: all the people in his original band have died that
Speaker 1: he's the last one left, and what a strange thing
Speaker 1: that is. You know, you've worked with a lot of musicians.
Speaker 1: Does it surprise you that you're still going and probably
Speaker 1: a lot of those people aren't going not as musicians
Speaker 1: at least. Yeah, I mean I think that there's I mean,
Speaker 1: there's certain things that have served me well. I mean
Speaker 1: in some ways, like you know, organization and you know,
Speaker 1: work ethic are helpful and you know, I want to
Speaker 1: communicate clearly with people. I think those are things that
Speaker 1: are kind of underrated and don't always naturally exist with musicians.
Speaker 1: To be honest, I think that you do look back
Speaker 1: at this age and say, wow, you know there's people
Speaker 1: who have left your life. And I mean even in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, some because of COVID, some because not. At
Speaker 1: the end of the year, I made a list and
Speaker 1: I knew twenty people who die and some were like
Speaker 1: you know, friends, parents, But that's a big list, and
Speaker 1: it struck me that probably as you get older at
Speaker 1: that list gross right or I mean, this was a
Speaker 1: strange year, but that list is unlikely to get too
Speaker 1: much smaller going forward. So what is next for you
Speaker 1: and the band? You've always been a very hard working
Speaker 1: touring band. I hope that when shows come back and
Speaker 1: are safe for people to attend, we will be playing them.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it's it's a lot of
Speaker 1: weight and see just like the rest of the world,
Speaker 1: and we're going to do our best and again to
Speaker 1: bring technology into it. Luckily, we are able in some
Speaker 1: ways able to interface and understand the reaction to the
Speaker 1: record that we just put out. That's seems like a
Speaker 1: very special record internally to us. So people seem to
Speaker 1: really like it, and that's that's very gratifying. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. This has been just wonderful. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you for having me. Thanks to Craig Finn for
Speaker 1: breaking down his songwriting process for us to hear. Open
Speaker 1: door policy and our favorite hold steady tracks had to
Speaker 1: Broken Record podcast that you should have. Subscribe to our
Speaker 1: YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcasts,
Speaker 1: where we can find all of our new episodes. You
Speaker 1: can follow us on Twitter apt Broken Record. Broken Record
Speaker 1: is produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrel, Cartin Gonzalez,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineer and help from
Speaker 1: Nick Chafee. Our executive producer is Meal of That. If
Speaker 1: you love this show and others from Pushkin Industries, consider
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Speaker 1: Broken Record is production of Pushing Industries. Our theme musics
Speaker 1: by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.